Inkjet printers are now very common and affordable and allow one to obtain decent print quality. They are used in home printing, office printing and commercial printing. The growth of inkjet printing is a result of a number of factors including reductions in cost of inkjet printers and improvements in print resolution and overall print quality. A continued demand in inkjet printing has resulted in a need to produce images of high quality, high permanence, good bleed and coalescence performance, good image gloss and high durability while maintaining a reasonable cost.
Two approaches that have been employed for making a coated glossy media that may be used in inkjet printing involve coatings with salt and coatings without salt. The coatings with salt have good bleed and coalescence characteristics, but not as good image gloss and durability. The coatings without salt have good durability and image gloss characteristics, but not as good bleed and coalescence. In some instances bonding agents may be employed; however, such agents do not improve all of these characteristics. In some instances coated print media having the requisite print characteristics may be employed. Unfortunately, such print media are coated with materials that are too expensive for commercial printing.
High speed inkjet web printing is a printing technology developed during recent years especially for commercial printing. However, print media face many challenges when used in high speed inkjet web printing. For example, glossy media for inkjet web printing has a trade-off between gloss and absorptivity of the media. Another trade-off is encountered between print durability and print quality (especially density and color gamut volume).